Pages

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Weekly Review - July 4th - July 10th

Every week at Invested Development, we scan the web for articles that relate to what we do and what we like. This week we read a lot about big pictures issues in development and cross border investing:

Thanks to the World Bank, investors finally have a simple, informative website with just about all they need to know about a countries regulations on direct foreign investment. Of course, knowing is just half the battle. Now we have to work on making it cheaper to actually do it. Until we can inspire and scale local Angel Investors, we need aggressively push down the costs of cross border investing.

The Douglas Adams reference alone was enough to make us read this! The feedback loop created by capitalism is by far it’s greatest asset, and Aid/charities greatest detriment. It can be dangerous to take this line of thought too far and we have to make sure not to use it as an excuse to ignore suffering.

Nathaniel Whittemore’s articles are becoming a staple of our Weekly Review’s, and with good reason. He gets it. A lot of people try to silo entrepreneurs, but this is a great example of how even traditional entrepreneurs can have tremendous social impact. Business can bring people together, even in one of the most divided regions in the world.

Danone (Dannon in the U.S) are the guys who bought Stoneybrook Farms, and it looks like the influences are going upsteam, not down as people feared. This made us think about how companies like Stoneybrook and Ben & Jerry’s have managed to keep their missions after acquisition. Luckily, the Trusteeship Institute has created an amazing video library of successful mission driven entrepreneurs talking about keeping their values post acquisition.